1. A Detailed Final Design

never give your crew the go signal if you are still not done with your design. sure you can add and remove features along the way, but having a concrete plan will save you time and money by knowing exactly what and how many materials you’d be needing.

2. Organize Your Crew

follow a schedule. your plumber does not have to tag along the whole renovation, this also applies to the rest of the crew. the masons and plumbers would usually come in first, sometimes carpenters and an electrician will be needed during this period. after these guys are done, you can call in the next group for finishing. never apply finishing when construction is ongoing; this will just dirty up the paint and fixtures.

3. Know Your Materials

you are lucky if the crew you hired is very experienced and detail oriented. but experienced or not, it wouldn’t hurt to know what kind of materials you should be using for your house. the crew we hired were not as experienced as those who have worked with designers, so we had to do our own research.

aside from colors, decide on what paint finish you’d like your interior walls to have. there are a lot of paint features to choose from, and you can start by deciding among matte, semi-gloss and gloss. cement, wood and metal require different types of paint. the boysen website is a good repository for this kind of information.

i love having matte finish walls for my office, but since common matte finish is reportedly prone to attract dirt, i shelled out extra cash and went for boysen’s virtuoso paints. it has the elegant matte finish that i wanted and remarkably very easy to clean.

4. Canvass, Canvass, Canvass

while it’s very convenient to just buy everything from the depot, it’s still wise to canvass for fixtures and other materials outside. try asking your local hardware store for primer paints, gypsum and hardiflex boards, nails and screws, putty, etc.. basic construction items are best purchased from them because they’re way cheaper. for fixtures, you may find designs that you like from unlikely sources. a designer friend of mine suggested bangkal, kamuning, soler and even divisoria. an expensive price tag does not necessarily make things worth your money; it’s when you love how the item beautifies your home even if it’s from a swap meat.

5. Always Make Sure Everything Works

before you close up a piping line, an electrical line or even calling it a wrap, make sure everything works as expected. you should make sure of that yourself. our plumber once assured us that his pipe works are a-ok to go, so the mason sealed the walls and set the tiles. when i tried to see if the hot water line is working, i was shocked to learn that there is no water coming out of the faucet. it turns out that the plumber has carelessly blocked the pipe with pipe cement when he was gluing them together. we had to remove a tile from where the suspected clog is.

i am not an architect or an interior designer, but i hope you’d find these tips useful :)

the speakers were kickass artists with nice folios to boot, but i can’t say they’re all good speakers. i think i dozed off somewhere between inksurge and team manila’s talk, and wished they’d just speak in tagalog so they won’t bore us to death with uuhm’s, aaahm’s and long pauses (probably thinking how to construct the sentences in english).

liongoren and davis drew the most attention that day because not only were they good artists (gawd they ALL are!), but they made sure it’s not going to be like a museum tour. LOL. i hoped to hear more of their experience and how it can help aspiring artists in their career. it’s sad because some of them just showed their works without even mentioning what inspired or challenged them to do it. “this is our so and so.. and next we have so and so..” and by the time they reached the 30th artwork, we got tired of drooling and started feeling sleepy.

PERO sana sana, next year meron pa :) at sana sana, wala ng stupid questions ha? pota naman, it’s your chance to ask mk12 something tapos eto tatanungin, “and correct me if i’m wrong, is that a macbook pro you’re using?” (refering to the laptop mk12′s been using during the live feed)

LOL LOL WINNER!

what the hell were they thinking when they designed this???

ps. the staff at figaro’s palanca branch were really nice. :) :) :)

katamari cake, anyone?

na na na na na na na